I guess I will never understand how some people think. I keep encountering this bitterness that President Obama commented on the Trayvon Martin case by saying that if he had a son, his son would look like Trayvon. It should be remembered that the president made that remark during a press conference he held to announce that he had selected Jim Yong Kim to head the World Bank. He was responding to a direct question about the case, and the first thing out of his mouth was, “I’ve got to be careful about my statements to make sure that we’re not impairing any investigation that’s taking place right now.” So, how do we get from that, to this?
By injecting himself in a minor Florida criminal case by implying Martin could be his son, the president of the United States — a onetime law lecturer, of all things — disgraced himself and his office, made a mockery of our legal system and exacerbated racial tensions in our country, making them worse than they have been in years. This is the work of a reactionary, someone who consciously/unconsciously wants to push our nation back to the 1950s.
It is also the work of a narcissist who thinks of himself first, of his image, not of black, white or any other kind of people. It’s no accident that race relations in our country have gone backwards during his stewardship.
Ironically, after Mr. Simon asserted that Obama had “exacerbated racial tensions in our country, making them worse than they have been in years,” he went on to say a few paragraphs later, “A further irony is that recent polls have shown racism in our culture at all-time lows. You don’t hear that from the media or from our administration, however. This knowledge is not to their advantage.” You rarely see someone contradict themselves like that with so little self-awareness.
What I’d like to know from Mr. Simon is if he has considered, really considered, how this verdict is making black people feel today. Forget about the specifics of the case or the merits of the verdict for just a moment, and just listen to what black folks are saying about how they feel. I know how the right loathes the idea of empathy playing any part in our justice system, but nothing should preclude an opinion journalist from engaging in a little empathy. Listen to black mothers talk about how they prayed that their babies would be girls because it’s so unsafe out there for a young black man. Listen to black fathers fret about how to explain the verdict to their sons.
This case isn’t an example of people playing the race card in order to force the prosecution of an innocent man. This case is an example of the pain people feel in the black community when they learn one more time that their children are considered expendable. That the jurors may have interpreted the law correctly doesn’t lesson that pain at all. In fact, it makes it much, much worse.